Monday, June 5

It's 4:30 am. I'm fashionably late, dude.

Hello!

I have a reservation, over there, at the Buffy table. Let me know when you can seat me. Yes, 'tis true. On this past weekend, I finally got over the hump. I see what the fuss is all about. I understand the fervor, I truly do. I am on board, people. Vampire Willow, Vampire Xander, Teenage feelin' Giles making out with the buffster's mom, these things are all to the good. Truly, the only experience I've had like this has been with comic books. Let me 'splain. No, too long, let me sum up.

i) Before I even started, I had borrowed, watched, and grown to love the one and only Firefly. It is lovely, and I was in love with it. Wash became more than my fave character, as far as I could tell I am wash in many aspects. I lurved this show, and so had gained purchase in the burgeoning whedonverse. (try saying burgeoning whedonverse 5 times fast)

1) I started the Buffy about 18 months ago with Matt's season one, having been warned about the cheesy badness, and having resolved to "stick it out" because the show gets "much much better".

2) watched all of season one in about a month, and yes, it is truly with the sucking. A dopey, run of the mill, boringly choreographed action monster hootenanny, about on par with everything else I don't watch on Space. Ooh, Xander's like Chandler, only Chandler was funny. I returned season 1 to Matt, and due to an unavailablility problem, borrowed season 2 from Dave, still willing to persist because in spite of everything there were still small moments of promise amongst the dreck, and I am nothing if not persisty.

3) Serenity was having one of those fan sneak previews. I went. I went in knowing that some drastic stuff was supposed to happen. Then, for no good reason, he killed Wash. That's when the air went out of me, and I spent the last 20 minutes hoping that everyone else would die too, and thoroughly not enjoying myself. It truly didn't help when I was cheerfully informed that "that's what Joss does. He kills people you care about for no reason, so that you can really feel the randomness of the loss. death in nonsensical, random and stupid, so just get over it."

4) I resolved not to keep watching Buffy, because if he was just gonna kill people off for no reason and with absolutely no style, and this was gonna be a virtue of the piece, why spend time investing myself in a buncxh of characters whose outcome is randomly determined anyways?

5) The summer ended with much reading (His Dark Materials, indeed) and much job hunting, and then TV started again, and then the job was successfully killed, stuffed and mounted, and then with the DVD's and xmas movies and podcast and oscars and the yada yada. And season 2 of Buffy just sat quietly on my shelf, forgotten about.

6) The job got easier, more routine and more fun. TV ended for the summer. DVD's were caught up with (mostly). And I looked at my shelves, and there was Buffy, and I just thought, christ, how long am I gonna hold a grudge? I think a year's enough for anyone. And so there it went.

7) season 2, while marginally better, was still just more of the same old shit I wasn't diggin' the first time around. Episode 17 was the key, I was told, the turning point that ramps it up and spins your head around into digsville, man. So I sticks. With it. And then, you know what? Yeah, it's better. Not that much better, though. But I see what could be, and so I'm okay with keping on. The finale actually rocks, and all the more when they kill Kendra, the accent that walks like a slayer, and so I'm now officially psyched. I return season 2, grab season 3, and giddyup.

8) SEASON 3 OF BUFFY ROCKS HARD SO FAR. I am really really loving this. The last time this happened, it was comics, It was animal man, which spends about 10 issues just being a regular comic book about a guy with animal powers, and progresses into an examination of storytelling itself. Buffy is exactly like that, in a way, like a regular monthly book that juuuusst skates by for like a year, never getting good, but never bad enough to make you stop collecting, and then suddenly BAM! It's not like all that mediocre shit didn't happen, it's just that now it all means something.

So, I'm in, like I said. I'm hoping to finish to the end of season 4 by next week, so that I can have something to discuss at length when I'm making the pilgrammage to Hi Mom! in North Carolina. It's a long ride, and I'm just glad to have something hefty to chew on, fat wise.

2 Comments:

Blogger Tederick said...

Point #8 is my favourite. :)

The reason why this is awesome is because you not only explain how you got into Buffy, but your description becomes more and more Whedonesque with each passing phrase. ("I am nothing if not persisty," and the like.)

9:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Welcome to the fold my friend....

10:42 AM  

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